Fifteen people were injured during the UCLA confrontation, including one person who was hospitalised, according to the president of the University of California system.
The chaotic scenes unfolded on Wednesday after police burst into a building occupied by anti-war protesters at Columbia University on Tuesday night, breaking up a demonstration that had paralysed the school.
Chancellor Gene Block at UCLA said in a statement that “a group of instigators” came on campus on Tuesday to “forcefully attack” the pro-Palestinian encampment, prompting the school to ask for assistance from outside law enforcement.
After a couple of hours of scuffles between duelling demonstrators at the University of California, Los Angeles, police wearing helmets and face shields separated the groups and restored calm.
Later on Wednesday, pro-Palestinian protesters rebuilt a barricade around their encampment. There were no counter-protesters in sight, and law enforcement officers were deployed throughout the campus.
In Madison on Wednesday, police with shields removed all but one tent and shoved protesters, resulting in a scrum. Four officers were injured, including a state trooper who was hit in the head with a skateboard, according to University of Wisconsin police spokesperson Marc Lovicott.
Within hours, protesters had erected more tents at the UW campus.
More than 30 people were arrested, most of them released without charges, but four were charged with battering law enforcement, police said.
Tent encampments of protesters calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies that support the war in Gaza have spread across campuses nationwide in a student movement unlike any other this century. The ensuing police crackdowns echoed actions decades ago against a much larger protest movement protesting the Vietnam War.
This is all playing out in an election year in the US, raising questions about whether young voters — who are critical for Democrats — will back President Joe Biden's reelection effort, given his staunch support of Israel.
There have been confrontations with law enforcement and more than 1,300 arrests. In rare instances, university officials and protest leaders struck agreements to restrict the disruption to campus life and upcoming commencement ceremonies.
The clashes at UCLA erupted when the pro-Palestinian protesters tried to expand their encampment late on Tuesday night. Counter-protesters then tried to pull down the parade barricades, plywood and wooden pallets surrounding the encampment. In the chaos, firecrackers exploded.
A serious human rights issue is emerging in the US after a huge police posse entered Columbia University in New York on Tuesday night and arrested dozens of pro-Palestine youngsters while bludgeoning some of them in the process. This police action was the latest undertaken at several US university campuses over the last fortnight to demand that their alma maters stop doing business with Israel which is responsible for over 30,000 civilian deaths in Gaza.
The police surround protesters in the University of Wisconsin. Reuters
Videos showed sympathetic professors being handcuffed like criminals and roughly shoved into police vans. Several students, including of Indian origin, have been handcuffed, arrested and expelled from the campuses. Nearly 4,000 kms away on Tuesday night as well, pro-Palestinian students at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), were set upon by a mob of 100 vigilantes who then kicked and wielded sticks and baseball bats at each other. The police subsequently entered the campus to quell the violence.
New York police arrested pro-Palestinian demonstrators holed up in a building at Columbia University and removed a protest encampment on Tuesday night. New York City Mayor Eric Adams said about 300 protesters had been arrested
As student rallies have spread to dozens of schools across the US in recent days expressing opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza, police have been called in to quell or clear protests
In New York City, videos showed a massive phalanx of armed policemen clearing a tent encampment and climbing up to enter a Columbia University building through a second-floor window to cow down the protesters. The building in question – Hamilton Hall – was stormed by the police exactly 56 years back to clear it of students protesting racism and the Vietnam War.
In close proximity to Columbia, civility prevailed for a while as demonstrators engaged in a peaceful confrontation with the police at the main gate of The City College of New York. But they too were set upon with dozens of arrests.
At Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, police forcibly cleared an encampment also late on Tuesday and arrested about 20 people. Brown University, however, saw a peaceful resolution. Protesters agreed to shut down their encampment after administrators agreed on a vote in October. One student Sophie told The Guardian, “It will not be forgotten. This is no longer an Israel-Palestine issue. It’s a human rights and free speech and a Columbia student issue.”
